Temporalia
by SkyborneVeggie
Summary: "What is time, Crowley doesn't understand. If he were to lean in and press his lips to the corner of Aziraphale's mouth, has he not already done so, is doing so, will always do so?" A reflection on time, in which Crowley broods and Aziraphale falls.


What is time?

Crowley doesn't understand, has never understood. This lingering scent of it, threaded into the fabric of the earth like undertones in a good strong wine.

He had eaten something, once. An oyster, and it was a wonderfully succulent salt-slip of a thing. He'd liked it.

And then it was there.

Aftertaste- the ghost of a thing in it's peak, right before expiration. The taste of perfection just before it all dissolves into ruin.

The flavour of ephemerality.

It had been in his mouth, clinging to the watering buds of his tongue as he tried to swallow it away. (Won't you take another? No, no, angel, have as many as you like.)

What is time? Humanity knows, has never lived without it, quantifies it in a thousand tiny chopped up pieces. A second, an hour, a year, a lifetime. They like to pretend they know what that means, but truly, do they? Ah Yes, from here to here is one unit and from here to here another, but even traveling light has a beginning and an end. How do you define the _between_?

What is time, Crowley asks. Is it a narcotic, a drug created to keep the new pet favorites dependent, desperate? Crowley's spent eternity without it, but here, have a taste. Let the obsession takes root. Who could count the hours, decades, centuries wasted on worrying about time if they tried? (More, more, they always want more. It always turns out all wrong anyways, too much in some places and too little in others.) No, instead Crowley spurns. He does not count the years since the garden, nor the hours spent since he's last seen the angel, nor the years till he'll next see him again. Time is affliction. He wants nothing to do with it.

What is time, Crowley begs. Time is a prison, trapping everyone into its linear grasp. The earth lives, one moment to the next, but it wasn't always so. Yes, first there was light, and then sky, land, and life, but before that there was _infinite_. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, yes, but there was also _More_.

Once there was peace, and a schism, and a war, but what would earth care for these things? Maybe this is why She shares only this much. One short, simple sentence to gloss over what he now knows to call the past-

_In the beginning was the heavens._

How many years had passed in that one half a phrase, if they were to count it now? And then, how many between Eden and his fall? They hadn't known what a year was then, but _She_ knew.

A year is the time it takes for the Earth to circle around the sun, but what did that matter then, when man did not age, the world did not change, and beauty was eternal? No, it did not matter, until the forbidden fruit, until canines punctured juicy flesh and tasted the sweetness of knowledge and choice.

They say it was an apple, but who was there to remember it? Crowley was, and no, She did not make apples. She'd made great green bulbs to grow on the ends of stalks, hard and bitter to taste. By then She'd tired of plants, moved on to ectognatha. Finish this for me, she'd said to him. Make it into something Good.

How many years did he spend there, cultivating, encouraging, evolving, before he grew that garden into what it became? Crowley doesn't know. He measures things the old way, the _first_ way, the way it was before he'd tempted Eve with that fruit he'd sown that was not an apple. Was, is, always will tempt. Just as he fell, falls, and will always be falling. Time is a construct, an illusion. What was is, and always will be. Crowley remembers.

And when humanity too fell, because of him, She in all her omnipotent wisdom and mercy provided a path to redemption. Not for Crowley, still marked and scarred with permanence. Not for the gardener, commanded to sow the seeds of temptation to which he would succumb to himself. So tell me, he asks, had She known?

Yes. Yes, what was is, and always will be, and She knows all. It had to be someone, and She would have known. So no, he cannot believe that he had been loved, not in the way man is. How could he, knowing this? For the spirits there are no shades of grey, no hope for salvation, only monochrome in black and white.

No, Crowley knows, he had never been loved. Just as She did not love the angels now.

_Ah._

_There_ it is. Another thought penned to his list of things never to say, right below █ ████ ███ and █ █████ ██████ ██ ████. Aziraphale can never be led to doubt. He cannot fall. Crowley forbids it.

Would he choose to go back, if he could? It's a silly question. He pretends not to ask it. What was is, and always will be, and we've already made our choices. And he's long realized that no, he wouldn't, not anymore. The Truth, is the truth is the truth_ is the truth_, and he refuses to be blinded again.

So no, he does not wish he could go back. But there are other things to wish to be.

There are others, whom God gifted gradient morals and mercy. Others in whom God _encourages_ questions, _encourages_ their thirst for knowledge and finds it Good. Humanity asks, they prod and they doubt. You shall not test the Lord, She says, but for them she still wets the midnight fleece, or blinds them on the Damascan road, or throws out their hip in a grappling match. And sometimes she is angry, yes, but God is Love and always forgives. For them.

Crowley yearns. And yes, someday he would wither and pass, but what good is an eternity of _this_? The opposite of love is not hatred, no. Not at all.

Maybe _then_ he'd understand. Maybe then the stench of time wouldn't seep in his pores, rise like bile in his throat, always reminding that _this will not last_.

And Crowley, fool that he is, always allows himself to hope. Tests it, with shallow, meaningless things. Maybe this new style of hat will stick 'round, or this coat. It's always so tempting, the newness of things. New things don't smell so much of hope as they do of _not transience_, and at the beginning he can always pretend that the tiny, distant undertone will eventually just fade away.

It never lasts long.

This time it will, he tells himself as he clinks glasses with Aziraphale over Ritz confit duck_, _after all is said and done. This time it's different.

Aziraphale beams at him from across the table, and it is one of those rare, exposed smiles that only shows when he thinks Crowley's not looking, but this time he's not hiding, he's looking directly into Crowley's eyes, and oh, if Crowley doesn't feel like a sun is splitting in his chest. It's almost too much all at once, and he bites down on the rim of his glass.

Wine rolls lazily over his tongue, rich, heady. He doesn't swallow, only holds the poison in his mouth and lets it burn.

It's different this time, he insists. There is no cardamom in this wine. Perhaps it is star anise, perhaps it is clove.

Perhaps there is no spice at all, and he's just grown so used to expecting the taste that he's manifested it in his mind.

There is no cardamom in the wine this time.

(There is.)


End file.
